A multitude of digital content may be accessed by users of computing devices via network addresses as part of the Internet. For example, there are millions of websites, each having a multitude of webpages that are usable to access digital images, animations, audio content, multimedia content, and so forth. Initially, in order to share access or awareness of this digital content, a user of a computing device copied the network address and sent it to another user of another computing device as text. Oftentimes, however, these network addresses are difficult to parse and accurately copy, thereby resulting in user frustration and computational inefficiencies caused by repeated attempts.
Accordingly, subsequent techniques have been developed to share the network address using a link preview. However, these techniques lack richness and are implemented either locally at the user's device or by a communication platform, via which, the link is to be shared. As a result, control of link generation is assumed by user's device or communication platform and is not configured to address the wide range of digital content that is available via the multitude of webpages. In one conventional example, a user may wish to share a link to a webpage with another user via a messaging communication platform. In response, the messaging communication platform typically selects the first image available via the webpage and a title of the page as the link preview. Thus, the generation of the link preview is controlled by the messaging communication platform and not a content provider of the webpage.
Although conventional techniques have been developed that involve Open Graph (OG) metadata, these techniques support a limited ability for the content provider to indicate which content is available via the webpage and still do not support an ability to control how content is used to generate a link preview. As such, conventional link preview generation techniques do not support an ability of a content provider to control generation of link previews that are communicated by other devices. This limits an ability of these systems to control their digital content and missed opportunities to expand a richness of this content when shared as part of link previews by devices “outside” of the content provider system.